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Let not the wise these slanderous words regard,
But curse the bones of every lying bard;
All other goods by fortune's hand are given—
A wife is the peculiar gift of heaven.
A wife! Oh, gentle deities, can he
That has a wife e'er feel adversity?
Would men but follow what the sex advise,
All things would prosper, all the world grow wise.
—Pope.
A Novelist's Tale.—Why is a novelist an unnatural phenomenon? Because his tale comes out of his head.
Sunshine at Home.—No trait of character is more valuable in a woman than a sweet temper. Home can never be made happy without it. It is like the flowers that spring up in our pathway, reviving and cheering us. Let a man go home at night, wearied and worn by the toils of the day, and how soothing is a word dictated by a good disposition! It is sunshine falling on his heart. He is happy, and the cares of life are forgotten.
"What Does Yf Spell?"
"Bad spelling," says Benjamin Franklin in one of his letters, "is generally the best, as conforming to the sound of the letters and of the words. To give you an instance: a gentleman received a letter in which were these words, 'Not finding Brown at hom, I delivered your meseg to his yf.' The gentleman, finding it bad spelling, and therefore not very intelligible, called his lady to help him to read it. Between them they picked out the meaning of all but the yf, which they could not understand. The lady proposed to called her chambermaid, 'because Betty,' says she, 'has the best knack at reading bad spelling of anyone I know!' Betty came and was surprised that neither sir nor madame could tell what yf was.
"'Why,' says she, 'y—f spells wife; what else can it spell?'
"And, indeed, it is a much better, as well as shorter, method of spelling wife than doubleyou-i-ef-e, which in reality spells double-uifey."
The Height of Woman.—Given sixty-six inches as the average height of a man, the average height of a woman is sixty-three inches.—Charles Blanc.